THE VILLAGES, Fla. — Poised for a decisive victory in Florida’s primary on Tuesday, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney kept up his attacks on rival Newt Gingrich Monday as the two men barnstormed the state in a last-minute effort to win over voters.
Romney renewed his criticism of Gingrich for accepting a $1.6 million consulting contract from mortgage giant Freddie Mac and mocked Gingrich’s proposal to build a manned moon base.
“The idea of the moon as the 51st state doesn’t come to mind,” Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, joked with a modest crowd.
Romney also labeled Gingrich, a longtime congressman from Georgia who served as House speaker, a Washington insider.
“You can’t just elect the same people to take different chairs,” Romney said.
Romney’s campaign kept up its attacks on Gingrich even though polls show that Romney had already erased Gingrich’s lead and was running well ahead of the pack on the eve of the election. After being blindsided by Gingrich’s upset victory in South Carolina just over a week ago, Romney is outspending Gingrich in Florida by at least $12 million, most of it on TV and radio ads bashing the former speaker.
Romney’s campaign surrogates, meanwhile, are holding daily conference calls with reporters to paint Gingrich as unstable and a danger to the entire Republican ticket in the fall. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, who never served with Gingrich, predicted Monday that the former speaker would not only lose to President Obama in the general election but drag other down-ballot Republicans down with him.
“I think Newt Gingrich at the top of the ticket scares the living daylights out of me and my colleagues,” Chaffetz told reporters. “That is why Mitt Romney has a lot of endorsements from so many fresh faces.”
Still, Gingrich was endorsed by former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain and received supportive comments from Sarah Palin, the former GOP vice presidential nominee. And his rallies have generally attracted larger and more enthusiastic crowds than Romney’s.
“We can win this,” Cain claimed Monday as he introduced Gingrich at a boisterous gathering in Tampa.
Romney and the Republican establishment that is backing him are hoping the Florida primary finally sets the occasional front-runner apart from Gingrich and two other candidates still in the race but not competing in Florida, former Sen. Rick Santorum and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. So far, Romney has won only New Hampshire while Santorum won Iowa and Gingrich won South Carolina, leaving no clear leader and no single candidate around whom the party can rally.
But even as top party officials and lawmakers rally around Romney, conservative commentators such as radio host Rush Limbaugh are raising questions about whether establishment Republicans have joined with Democrats in trying to defeat Gingrich. It’s a point Gingrich likes to highlight as well.
“I am real change and that is why the establishment in both parties are really terrified,” Gingrich told one crowd. “Because we will change things.”
